Vedanta Categories

Ramanuja on Categories

1. Ramanuja on Categories

. karas Critique of Categories

Sam
The First Step
The Second Step: Rejection of Substance

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anta Categories,

Ramanuja on Categories

Substance and Non-substance

Under Vedanta, we shall discuss only Ramanuja and Samkara.
Ramanuja makes an initial distinction between substance and
non-substance (a-dravya).
Substance is that which has states, or which undergoes change.
The category of non-substance includes qualities, actions, and
universals (which are the categories in the Vaises.ika system).
The non-substantial entities depend upon substances.

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anta Categories,

Ramanuja on Categories

The List of Non-Substantial Entities

The list of ten non-subtantial entites include:
The five qualities of the five elements.
The three gunas-a la Sam
. khya-which characterize matter.
Sakti or power of the cause to produce effect.
Sam
. yoga or contact as it is admitted in the Vaises.ika.

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anta Categories,

Ramanuja on Categories

The Kind of Substances

Substances are six. The fall in two groups:
1
Matter
2
Spirit.
Matter includes
1
prakr.ti or nature
2
time
3
knowledge (which is both a substance and quality of souls)
Spiritual Substance include:
a pure (i.e., intelligible) matter, having only the sattva quality and
without rajas or tamas.
b the finite souls.
c God.
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anta Categories,

Ramanuja on Categories

Venkatanatha on Space and Time

The followers of Ramanuja such as Venkatanatha expound
interesting theses about space and time.
Space is not a mere absence (as the Buddhists held) but
something positive that we experience even when and where it is
occupied by things.
Time also is directly perceived as a quality of things that we
perceive, it is one and eternal although it may appear to be
many.
In effect, time is co-existent with God.
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anta Categories,

Ramanuja on Categories

The Relation of Inseparability as a Fundamental

Relation
There is one fundamental relation that Ramanuja accepts: the
relation of inseparability (a-pr.thaksiddhi).
It is neither identity nor identity and difference, but which welds
a substance and a quality, or two substances, one of which is
dependent on the other, into one qualified (visis.t.a) entity.
In many respects it is like the Vaises.ika inherence (samavaya),
but the idea of dependence is stronger than in inherence.
Metaphysically, this is the relation between soul and body, as
well as among God, finite souls, and the world.
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anta Categories,

 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

The Advaita Vedanta, not unlike Nagarjuna, launched a radical

critique of all doctrines of categories.
In this brief exposition, we shall expound the Advaita thesis in
two steps:

. karas Rejection of Different Types of Reals, leaving only the

Sam
category of substance and relation.
Eeven the categories of substance and relation cannot be
coherently stated.

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anta Categories,

 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Rejection of Vaises.ika Categoreis

The Vaises.ika thesis is that there are many different types of
reals.
They are nonetheless related by inherence (samavaya),
There is an ontological glue that respects differences of type
while knitting those entities together
Inherence is defined as the relation between entities which are
inseparable (ayutasiddha).

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anta Categories,

 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

. karas Critique of Vaises.ika Categories

Sam
. kara questions the sense in which a substance and its quality
Sam
or a substance and its actions are inseparable while yet being
distinct types of entities, and argues that none of the senses
does it hold good.
. kara to the conclusion that it is best to say
All these lead Sam
that all these entities are, at bottom, identical.
The blue and the Lotus - in the blue lotus-are
fundamentally identical.
The quality is of the nature of the substance.
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anta Categories,

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Non-Substantial Categories Are Mere Names for

Substance
It is the substance that, from a different perspective, is called by
different names, just as the same
Devadatta is sometimes referred to as the son of Yajnadatta,
the husband of Rukmini, the father of Rucidatta, and so
forth.
The guna, and likewise an action, is really, in essence, the
substance (dravyatmakata gunasya).
. kara there is only one category,
It would seem, then, that for Sam
namely substance, and one relation, namely tadatmya (being
its essence).
It is a form of identity that tolerates differences
(bhedasahis.n.u).
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anta Categories,

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Substance Entails Difference

The category of substance entails difference:
1

difference of a substance from other substances

difference of a substance from its qualities and actions,

difference between the particular and the universals it

exemplifies,

difference between the permanent substance and its changing

states,

difference between the cause-substance and the effect-substance.

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anta Categories,

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Dialectical Critique of the Category of Difference

. kara school therefore undertake a
The philosophers of the Sam
dialectical critique of the very category of difference.
By this they show that it involves incoherencies such as infinite
regress and self-contradiction.
What is called into question is the ontological status and
determinability of difference.
The Central argument is that difference can neither be a relation
nor a quality of the substance

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anta Categories,

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Difference Cannot be a Quality of the Substance

Suppose that A is different from B and that As difference from

B is a quality of A.

If As difference from B is a quality, the it is different from A

itself.

If As difference from B is itself different from A, it cannot be a

quality of A.

The same holds good of Bs difference from A.

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anta Categories,

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Difference Cannot be a Relation Between A and B

Suppose difference is a relation between A and B.

Then one may ask, how is this relation itself related to A and to
B?
We thus are confronted with infinite regress at all levels.

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 . karas Critique of Categories

Sam

Falsity of the Theory of Category

If difference is not a real, then the entire theory of categories-of

whichever school-becomes false

That is to say, difference is only phenomenally real, having

conceptual reality but not ontological reality.

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anta Categories,

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